I wonder if Ozzie Smith still hates Tony La Russa for the way he handled the Ozzie/Royce Clayton situation of 1996.  It’s often been rumored that Ozzie doesn’t want anything to do with the Cardinals until the La Russa era is over.

What’s the status of the Jose Mesa/Omar Vizquel feud, for that matter?  I never heard that it was resolved.  Omar isn’t dead, I don’t think.  He’s outlived Carlos Baerga, that’s for sure.

The other day I was wondering when Jose Canseco’s new book is scheduled to be released.  I heard him talking it up a few months back; it’s supposed to be titled something like "Vindicated."  This book will not only be Jose’s victory lap, but it will also likely include more explosive allegations (based on hearsay–he probably spilled all of his first-hand material in "Juiced.")

Speaking of books, when is the sequel to "Moneyball" due out?  I thought it was supposedly going to cover the 2004 draft.  Or possibly the absence of any measures of variance in the moneyball numbers, I don’t know.

For years and years I hated Lance Berkmann.  I thought that he was a big oaf, not too bright and that everything had been handed to him without much effort.  He wrecks his knees up playing football in the offseason, while his ever-expanding beer belly grows.  I am going to an Astros game in early April and I will be sitting in the Crawford boxes.  Hopefully, after watching the guy a play an entire game, I will have an appreciation for Berkmann.

I have been thinking…it seems hypocritical for me to hate Billy Beane for throwing a chair through the window and all that stuff that’s in Moneyball.  Be sure, I’m not a fan of Beane’s policies.  I just can’t hate Beane for that type of thing, when I only praise Ozzie Guillen for exactly the same thing.

What’s the deal with that Frank Thomas/Ken Williams feud, anyway?  Frank Thomas is still upset about being left off the 1984 Olympic team, a friend likes to say.  It seems like Thomas is always griping about something.  It sure is good theater, however.

I can’t wait for the fine folks at Pontiac to bring back the Fiero, complete with a factory-standard "LeBra."  In this age of retro-designs (the new Camaro, TBird, Mustang, etc.) eventually they will run out of retro designs and force-feed us the nostalgia of the Pontiac Fiero.  Not exactly a baseball comment to be sure, but I once listened to a baseball game in an ’87 Mustang, which was mentioned somewhere in here.

1) I do like Danny Haren.  In the 2004 World Series he was the only Cardinals pitcher that showed any kind of competitive spirit when La Russa brought him in for the struggling Jason Marquis. 

2) I caught an A’s game on ESPN last season in which Rich Harden was the starter…that guy has "Cy Young" written all over him, with the standard health caveats.   

3) I believe that the statistical assumptions about college players are generally false.  But I do believe that there is a certain emotional maturity that comes with players whose whole future isn’t riding on whether or not he progresses through the minor leagues.  If you select a guy who goes to rookie ball, and then A, AA, and on up the ladder he’s going to be focusing on that 24-7.  This runs the risk of burnout.  Guys like Zito, Street, Mark Prior, and Cardinals rookie Anthony Reyes at least seem like they’re emotionally together, and that they are well-prepared to handle adversity.  Compare that to Carlos Zambrano, who prior to last season, would fall apart after making a bad pitch or two.

4) Nosebleed tickets to an A’s game are, what, $10 a piece?  Compare that to what they’ll run you in Boston or New York.  Even the nosebleeds in Milwaukee, the original "Uecker territory,"  will run you $12 a piece (This in no way reflects my opinion of the Milwaukee Brewers.  They’re going to have an exciting team this season, and I look forward to watching their club claw their way out of "doormat" status). 

So there we have it: Credit has been given where credit is due!

In the world of academics, there once was a debate between an academic and those who questioned the validity of his ideas.  They went back and forth at conferences and in professional journals, until finally this particular academic’s opponents made a point that seemed ironclad.  With that it appeared the argument was wrapped up in favor of the skeptics.  This professor, unable to handle an argument that dared question his superior intellect, fired off a reply that sought to end hostilities, on the grounds that he was correct because he taught at a more prestigious institution than the other professors. 

In that vein, then, you will find ESPN’s Rob Neyer.  Anybody who dares question the validity of his ideas or analysis is promptly met with some variation of the same faulty argument that the professor employed.  “I’m a sportswriter and your not” he would respond to those in his ESPN chat (back when it was free, that is.  If I didn’t like it when it was free, why would I pay money for it?).

I never took anything from one of Rob Neyer’s columns other than the fact that he has a high opinion of himself. 

Consider this gem from the first paragraph of his most recent ESPN column:

Based purely on the raw statistics, the 2005 Cleveland Indians were the best team in the major leagues. They might have won 103 games, which would have given them the best record in the American League by a pretty fair margin.

They might have won 103 games?!?!  What does that mean?  Doesn’t the fact that The 2005 Cleveland Indians only won 93 games throw the methodology into question?  These meaningless words were published under this bold-typed attention-grabber: Competitive Division Could Hurt Indians.  Rob’s really some kind of oracle.  Way to go, Rob. 

Here’s another Neyer quote from Alan Schwarz’s The Number’s Game. 

Fielding is the last refuge of the idiots.  People can say anything they want, because there aren’t many statistics to refute it.

So apparently Neyer thinks that anybody who considers defense to be an integral part of the game is an “idiot.”  Now let me re-direct your attention to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s La Russa quote of February 20^th:

"I just think a guy like So (Taguchi) is going to play one of the three spots (in most games)," La Russa said. ""Because of this sport, you pick the complete player. John (Rodriguez) could be hitting .500 and if he doesn’t defend and doesn’t run the bases, somebody hitting .300 who does both of those things is going to get the playing time. … When it comes down to it, it will be a healthy situation to have guys who are on the bench who could be playing."

In Neyer’s eyes, then, is La Russa an idiot?  George F. Will doesn’t think so (the same George F. Will whose laudatory quote appears on the paperback-cover of Schwarz’s The Number’s Game).

I could employ the same type of argument that Neyer and the professor employ all the time.  I could say that La Russa is right and Neyer is wrong about everything because La Russa is #3 on the career wins list and Neyer isn’t.  But I won’t do that.  Neyer is right: a competitive division could hurt the Indians.

Here’s a Tony La Russa quote from the Feb. 20th St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

"I just think a guy like So (Taguchi) is going to play one of the three spots (in most games)," La Russa said. ""Because of this sport, you pick the complete player. John (Rodriguez) could be hitting .500 and if he doesn’t defend and doesn’t run the bases, somebody hitting .300 who does both of those things is going to get the playing time. … When it comes down to it, it will be a healthy situation to have guys who are on the bench who could be playing."

La Russa understands what a lot of guys don’t: when considering baseball talent, it is necessary to consider the entire set of baseball skills.  Baseball managers/general managers face trade-offs when considering their personnel.  A guy might have a good bat, but be a defensive liability (Mike Piazza).  Another might be strong defensively, but mediocre with the bat (Mike Matheny).  Baseball executives must consider trade-offs between these skill sets: Matheny, in his prime, might cost less than a Piazza, but what are the costs associated with Piazza’s defensive liabilities?  What is the opportunity cost of taking on Piazza’s salary, when he was in his prime?  If you can sign two quality arms for your bullpen and keep a Mike Matheny with what one Mike Piazza costs you, then the former is usually preferred to the latter. 

Occasionally, a guy comes around who is known as a "five-tool" guy.  You know the five-tools: hitting for power, hitting for average, speed, glove and arm.  JD Drew was a guy who was billed as a five-tool guy, but he never panned out.  A better example of a five-tool guy is Vladimir Guererro, the best all-around player in baseball (I know, I know…Alex Rodriguez is great–if I’m starting a team, though, and I have tap one guy to be the franchise cornerstone, I’ll take Guererro every time.  He adds the quality of "good teammate" that contract differentials don’t necessarily capture).  A five-tool guy is a guy who the manager can run out every night and doesn’t need to worry about facing those same trade-offs in skillsets during the game–he’ll be the best chance a team has for his position for any given situation.

Then, consider the Oakland A’s, who value the quality of keeping the bat on the shoulder above all else.  Above defense, above team chemistry; everything.  When they substitute towards one skill, away from every other skill in the shopping cart, they are "putting all their eggs in one basket."  And this leads to nothing but ruin.     

Today I purchased a new glove from my local sporting good store.  In so doing, I put my old glove, "Old Red," out to pasture.  But before doing so, I had a moment to think of all the time we’ve spent together, good times and bad, my glove was always there for me.  Except for the time I needed her most.  Then she let me down like a wife you meet, greet and marry over one weekend in Vegas. 

I had spent an entire two years preparing for my senior season of baseball.  My junior year I was terrible, literally the worst player on the team.  Before that I had played several years of Khory League ball (the St. Louis equivalent of Little League), and in Khoury League I was a dominant pitcher.  I was a large left-handed hurler who brought the heat with each pitch.  My pitching philosophy back then was not necessarily as refined as a Leo Mazzone might like it to be: my theory was that the harder you throw the better you pitch.  My mechanics, therefore, were always out of whack and my arm was completely ruined by the time I was 12.  My Khoury League coaches were never big on instruction in mechanics; the head coach was just trying to score points with his step-son and wife, while the other coach was a drunk.  It was this inflamatory pain just below my left shoulder that caused me to temporarily abandon baseball, in favor of hockey.

Eventually, I came back to the game as a Junior in high school.  That season I tried converting as an outfielder, but I was suspect both with a bat and with a glove; I never saw any playing time.  In fact, I never even saw any practice time.  I was always the guy who had to catch balls for coach to hit grounders for the infield drills.  As you can imagine, I was humilated; humiliated to the extent that I resolved to do something about it. 

That off-season, I worked my tail off.  I ran at least two miles a day, implemented a rigorous weight-training program and took fly balls nearly every day of the week.  Three days a week, I was in the batting cages; attempting to rectify years of neglect of my swing and stance in a single off-season (that’s right; I do know how Mike Matheny feels!). 

By the time the spring of 1998 rolled around, my senior year, I felt that I was amply prepared to make a run at the open outfield spot.  Unfortunately, the second day of practice I suffered an ankle injury when I stepped on an old baseball that was perfectly camouflaged with the gym floor during one rainy-day practice.  I refused to blame it, and I spent a couple of weeks in the trainer’s room icing it and soaking it in the whirlpool; trying to repair it in time to have a shot at any kind of playing time. 

As you’ve probably guessed, I never got the playing time.  As my ankle healed, I rejoined my team’s practices…but standing next to coach, catching balls from his groundball drills hit to the infielders.  I foolishly told myself that, if given just one chance, I could prove that I was adequate to be the fourth-outfielder on that team…and then, who knows?  The lack of confidence that the coach had in me starting to manifest itself within me as a type of fear: I was afraid to play because I might screw up.  Screwing up would mean that I wouldn’t get any more playing time, but playing time would necessarily bring the fear that I would screw up.  It sounds silly, but this fear got so ingrained in me that today I still get jitters when I bat in my recreational softball league.

So one day late in my senior year we were playing the weakest team in the conference.  Our team had built a sizable lead, and the coach indicated that I would be going in for the next inning.  I grabbed my glove and tried, unsuccessfully, to restrain visible evidence of my boundless enthusiasm.  I was going in! 

When I got the call, I ran out to center field with a fire in my belly that left me long ago.  The first hitter lined a single to my right, so I ran over, grabbed it, and promptly threw the ball back to my infield cut-off man, flawlessly displaying the mechanics I had been taught in the process.

The second guy batted and then the third came to the plate.  I started moving my feet a little so that I would be able to see around the pitcher, at the actual moment of contact should it occur.  As I’m doing this I hear a "crack" and then I see a ball sailing high into the air.  My late jump notwithstanding, I managed to catch up to the ball well enough that I should have made the catch. 

The field where the worst team in the conference played was also the poorest school, and their field was the least-kept of any in the Suburban North.  There were huge trees hanging over the center field wall, and as I pounded away at the turf to catch up to the ball, I ran into those trees that hung over the field.  I looked up, and the ball was streaking for the earth like a doomsday comet; only my heroics would save my team and my ambitions in organized baseball.  As I turned around to make the catch, the ball hit one of the far branches of one of the trees, causing the ball to skip off the top of my glove and into the thicket beyond the field. 

These events started a rally by our opposition, and I was promptly benched after getting my at-bat the following inning.  I remember as I came trotting in after my huge error in center field the coach looked at me and said "well, at least you started strong!" 

I often fantasize about what might have happened had I gotten a good jump and brought that one back.  I don’t speculate that I would’ve been in the majors or even had been given a look by a team in an independent league.  But maybe some things might have been different.

My point is two-fold:

1) If your kid wants to play baseball, be sure you know who’s coaching him. 

2) Sure, it wasn’t the physical glove that left me in that moment, but rather it was my glove; my glove as an extension of myself.  It is in these terms, then, that I think of that old glove. Through it all, the same glove was attached to my right hand.  Now it is to be retired to a dark corner somewhere, a fate better than the usual second-hand rack at the local Goodwill.  Occasionally, I will pull it out and think of all these things.          

Just a few days ago I bought a new Brewers cap from the "lids"vendor in one of the local malls.  The cap features the baseball glove logo from the 1980′s and for most of the 1990′s.  The fingers of the glove form an "M" while the thumb and palm of the glove form a "b."  The Brewers ballglove remains the most clever logo in all of sports.

I remember the first time I saw the Brewers ballglove logo.  The very first pack of baseball cards I ever received as a child included a team logo sticker (This would have been the 1984 Fleer set), and as luck would have it, that sticker featured the ballglove logo of the Milwaukee Brewers. 

At first I didn’t recognize the simplisitic brilliance of the Brewers ballglove (I was only four or five years old).  I remember thinking "this is the crummiest logo I’ve ever seen."  I remember staring at it for hours on end, studying it, contemplating it’s hidden meaning.  Why would the thumb and the palm be segmented from the rest of the ballglove?  Why are there only three fingers on the glove?  Why is this glove right-handed?  It’s discriminatory to lefties! I, of course, am left-handed.

The more I studied it, the more I came to appreciate that logo before I reallized the glove formed an "M-B."  In a time when the Yankees logo was a top hat on a baseball bat, and the Padres featured a monk taking a huge cut, the Brewers were wearing a picture of one of their professional tools.  Then I would rank the relative quality of the club’s history based on the relative importance of the logo they would wear, the logic being that the older the team, the better the equipment they wore pictures of on their caps.  The Red Sox had a logo that featured a pair of red socks, so clearly the Boston organization wasn’t on par with the Ballglovin’ Brewers! 

Eventually I figured out the "M-B" code hidden in the ballglove, but it wasn’t until I was 10 or 11 and I was watching a Brewers game that was being carried on cable.  It was as an adult, however, that I have come to appreciate the logos from that era, the Yankees top hat, the swinging monk, the Cardinals disc; but my favorite was always the Brewers ballglove. 

The All-Bum Team 2006
(in batting order with position noted)

1)  Bret Boone (2B) –What’s his secret?  He’s a bum.  Sshhh.  Don’t tell anybody.

2)  Jim Edmonds (CF)—2006 brings Jimmy one year closer to his ultimate goal, retirement. 

3)  Alfonso Soriano (RF)—I’m putting him in right-field just to stick it to him.

4)  Barry Bonds (LF)—Barry says that he’s hanging them up after this season…I for one can’t wait for his acceptance speech for the Oscar that’s sure to follow his silver screen debut in a remake of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s classic “The Running Man.”

5)  Alex Rodriguez (3B)—Take your pick of reasons to dislike this guy: he complained about the competitive quality of a team he signed a $252 million contract with, he openly lobbied for Nomar’s job, his “test-the-waters” approach to anything public, his crummy endorsements; again, take your pick. 

6)  Ivan Rodriguez (C)—All accounts say that this guy doesn’t care much for handling pitching staffs, that he has a bad attitude.  Then whenever he tests the market, nobody gives him a huge contract and he always wonders why. 

7)  Doug Mientkiewicz (1B)—Here’s a guy that doesn’t give Boston back it’s baseball, saying that he needs to put his kids through college.  Mienkiewicz has made over $9 over the course of his major league career.  Maybe he’s planning on sending his kids to the same school that Jim Thome’s kids will be attending.

8)  Rafael Furcal (SS)—I don’t understand why the Dodgers keep throwing large-sums of money at guys…I just don’t get it.

9)  Curt Schilling (SP)—Each time this guy opens his mouth I am astonished by what comes out. 

10)  Jose Mesa (CP)—He repeatedly threatened the life of Omar Vizquel, reportedly because Omar wrote in his book that Mesa “choked” in Game 7 of the 1997 Worlds Series. 

11)  Larry Bowa (Manager)—Pat Burrell used to walk in the back end of the dugout to avoid having contact with him.  I might be wrong, but I thought managers were only effective if his team didn’t hate him.

12)  Billy Beane (General Manger)—The A’s don’t draft this year until #66 overall, so Jabba The Hutt will be long gone by the time the A’s make their first selection of 2006.  Although “sluggish” on the basepaths and weak with the glove, Jabba rarely if ever swings, a quality that prompts Toronto GM J.P. Ricciardi to select him with the 14th selection overall.

Book Review: Scout’s Honor: The Bravest Way to Build a Winning Team

Scout’s Honor, by Bill Shanks, goes a long way to explaining the appeal that so many find in the Moneyball philosophy.  Buried somewhere in the mountain of statistics is a great appeal to our romantic sense of egalitarian principles. 

Our hearts were warmed by Moneyball’s Lewis when, for example, tales were told of submariner Chad Bradford who never really did anything until the magical Billy Beane and his statistics finally got hold of him.  Or the story of the catcher with the “bad-body” who did not expect to be drafted, let alone 35th overall.  If the numbers tell the correct story, your past doesn’t matter.  You will get a shot in the Oakland organization. 

These egalitarian notions are only aided by the portrait painted, inadvertently, by Bill Shanks in Scout’s Honor.  Shanks does provide an answer, but it is never explicitly described in terms accessible to the general reader.   

The first impression I received from Shanks is that the traditional way that clubs operate is one vast old boys’ network.  According the old boys’ view, it’s not the baseball you know but who you know in baseball.  My freshman year of college, for example, I went to talk to the coach about open tryouts.  The first thing he said was not “what position do you play?” or “what kind of shape are you in?” but rather “who did you play for in high school?”  Look up any open tryouts for an independent league team.  Along with your spikes, glove and hat, they also want you to bring along your baseball resume.  On the baseball resume, you list the teams you played for, and who you played for. 

Just as in my own experiences, Shanks describes a world where high school players attend showcase workouts, usually put together by a local with experience at the major league level.  These showcase workouts are a large factor in what gets guys noticed (but not the only thing).  In that event, the whole system comes off like a pyramid scam, whereby you pay all the way up the ladder for your kid to have even a marginal shot at the major leagues.

The same kind of thing goes on throughout the entire book; guys move from one organization to another and everybody knows one another and they all belong to an exclusive club of people affiliated with major league clubs.  Managers of local clubs are given percentages of contracts if a guy they refer to the majors signs with the big club. 

What Shanks does not do such a good job of explicitly pointing out is this: The market for major league talent is so competitive that this old boys’ network is very efficient in spotting talent.  The market for talent is so competitive that many clubs themselves have directly taken over the role of tryout camps with serve the dual purpose of showcases for young talent (with the Atlanta Braves at the forefront of that movement).  With the talent pool of American kids shrinking, many clubs have created academies in Latin America.  It’s very unlikely that some kid with a dynamite arm or a live bat will go without being granted a chance (although there are still weaknesses: just as Albert Pujols, the choice of the St. Louis Cardinals—in the 13th round of the 1999 draft).

Because of this competitiveness in player development, the traditional methods have also produced some of those feel-good stories.  Our hearts were warmed when we saw Dennis Quaid’s Jim Morris strike out Hollywood’s version of Royce Clayton as a thirty-something major-leaguer who was discovered by the Tampa Ray Devil Rays…at a tryout camp!

The book includes a nice chapter on Dale Murphy, a personal favorite.  I have always wondered about the clubhouse dynamic of those Philadelphia teams of the early 1990’s that featured John Kruk, Lenny Dykstra, Darren Daulton, and…Dale Murphy.  Shanks’ description of Murphy’s mental weakness doesn’t resolve any of the issues surrounding the Phillies clubhouse of the early 1990′s.       

The biggest disappointment of the book is the absence of “scout-speak.”  It seems like whenever I read an article that features quotes or an interview with scouts, they always have something clever to say about a guy.  For example, in Pete Rose’s My Prison Without Bars he wrote that Sandy Koufax was a guy who could “throw a ball through a car wash without getting it wet.”  Bill Lee once wrote that he was out on the mound throwing garbage.  “Can you hit this garbage can?” he asked.  “How about this old toilet seat?”  It’s this kind of material that I find appealing, and I would’ve expected more of it in a book that focuses almost exclusively on scouting.

The writing is also uninspiring; at times the pace drags through long-winded biographies of guys that I don’t really care to know about.  Certain aspects of the content are laid out in a manner similar to Moneyball; but whether that was Shanks’ idea or the publisher I do not know.  There were also some errors in the editing process.

Despite these deficiencies, the reader cannot help but be impressed with that Atlanta organization and all that they have accomplished for going on two decades now.  The future for Atlanta definitely looks bright, despite a high turnover rate and now the absence of Leo Mazzone from their bench.

Rating: 3 ½ stars out of 5.      

Here’s a Mark Mulder quote from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of February 16, 2005:

       "Is this the place I want to be? Sure," Mulder said as Cardinals pitchers and catchers officially reported to Roger Dean Stadium. "But it’s not something I can control. It’s not something I’m going to worry about."

If he can’t control something, then that means that he has no choice; that Mulder subscribes to a fatalistic vision of life.  But clearly, he does have a choice.  It’s the choice that Alex Rodriguez made in 2001 and probably regretted during all of those years the Rangers had no pitching.  It’s the same choice that Edgar Renteria made and regretted in 2005.  Mulder is going to be making the same choice that Johnny Damon made this offseason and will surely regret by the middle of May 2006.  It’s the choice to forgo the assumption that a guy has any control over his own situation and that whatever his agent says is what is best for him.  Of course, the agent faces a different incentive scheme than what the player he represents faces. 

So then I must ask: Why do guys sign with agents like Scott Boras?  Boras is known for chasing the top-dollar, regardless of whether it’s with a high-quality major league organization or if it’s with the Oakland A’s. 

One of two possibilities must exist: 1) The player’s incentives are correctly aligned with that of the agent (chasing the top dollar), or 2) Players need to re-align their professional contracts with guys who better represent the player’s interests. 

Are players interested in chasing the top dollar?  Some are.  Some are convinced to be by their agents or the people around them.  What’s the difference between a four-year deal at $38 million and a four year deal at $40 million if the $40 million means you have to play in a place you really don’t want to?

I imagine that some guys are convinced that they’re acting in the best interest of their friends and colleagues around baseball by setting the market.  If Renteria signs a lucrative deal with Boston, that means that St. Louis is going to offer Eckstein more, and everybody wins: it’s a kind of solidarity that the player’s union pushes.

But if agents aren’t truly representing the interests of their guys, they are much better off seeking a solution somewhere in between.  If a guy should sign with Dave Stewart, for example, they know they truly have a guy representing them who understands the nuances of playing a full major league season and can also handle the technical aspects of a deal.

As for Mulder, my guess is that he will go on the market next winter and wind up somewhere in the East, probably New York or Baltimore.  Baltimore has money to blow and a commitment to Tejada…they also have a PR nightmare with the whole Raffy Palmeiro mess from last season.  These things are only cured by winning, so I guess that the pitching-poor Orioles will be aggressive next winter.  The strange thing is, this could also turn out to be the best thing for Mulder.  Most guys get their attitudes together after having spent some time with Leo Mazzone. 

I think that the practice of a championship team visiting the White House has crossed into some sort of institutional area that isn’t necessarily political in the sense that one party or one politician benefits from having had the championship team present. 

When the White Sox visited last Monday, they visited not only President Bush but they were also greeted at The White House by Democratic Senators **** Durbin and Barack Obama as well as Chicago’s Democratic Mayor Daley.  At the same time, I couldn’t find any coverage of the event either as it happened or after the fact: I had to dig through a Chicago Tribune the day after to get the details of the visit.  The practice of mlb teams visiting The White House has been going on since 1883, the Baseball Almanac reports.  I think that when it’s been going on for that long it can be considered institutional. 

Guillen might not have realized the consequences of his Chavez visit.  It is possible that he wanted to share the World’s Series triumph with his Venezuelan countrymen and going through Chavez was the only way to do it.  Chavez is a guy who stood hand-in-hand with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a few months ago at a conference Ahmadinejad organized entitled “Envisioning A World Without Zionism.”  I will give Ozzie the benefit of the doubt by assuming that he doesn’t agree with these and other Chavez principles, and that he probably is not well-versed in everything the Chavez regime has its hand in.

Everybody knows that politicians will appear with the flavor-of-the-moment (See Ted Kennedy and his ‘Mike McGwire-Sammy Soser’ moment).  This practice is only accentuated in repressive and semi-repressive regimes that rely on tools like propoganda to stay in power (with these regimes, results-oriented public policy is not the chief goal of the politician; staying in power is—I’m not saying that US politicians don’t try to stay in power, but they don’t kill-off the opposition to make it happen).  The people of these countries see right through these devices.  Guillen might have considered this before going before the people of Venezuela with Chavez.

But that still doesn’t discount the fact that Guillen completely blew off the institutions that in some form or another gave rise to all that he cherishes.  He still should be aware of the fact that the Chavez regime represses his own people by virtue of the fact that he would have to go through Chavez to get to the Venezuelan people.

How about a review of some of Ozzie’s recent comments?

When researching that last blog post, I came upon an article where Ozzie was discussing his recent US Citizenship.  It was noted that his son is a pretty decent baseball player, and could figure to go pretty high in this year’s draft.  He also has offers from several colleges.  They asked Ozzie which he prefers, his son being drafted or going to college.  He said "If he could be drafted high, I would prefer that.  That would mean more money for me." 

Why did Ozzie have to rip Nomar?  I understand and appreciate the fact that he ripped ARod, but what did Nomar ever do to Ozzie?  At this point, I am more impressed that an injury-prone guy is willing to play for a WBC squad that doesn’t even figure to be as competitive as some of the other clubs. 

The Nomar, and to a lesser extent ARod, remarks are what really sets me off about Ozzie.  It reeks of the same sort of nationalist sentiment that Chavez proclaims when he’s the guy determining who is and isn’t truly Latino.  It’s the practice of creating something that is exclusive of other people, and Ozzie is the one doing the excluding. 

It should be noted that today Ozzie apologized…but I heard that he apologized for making the remarks, not sorry that he said them.  He said, and this is as close to a quote as I can get without looking up the exact syntax (my internet connection is slow tonight, for some reason), “I regret making those remarks.  Saying those things is really the only thing that I’ve ever felt I’ve said or done that was wrong.”  I wonder how Carlos Lee feels about that.      

I suppose my opinion of Ozzie is this: He is loud-mouthed and arrogant, a combination that usually translates to “ignorance.”  Ozzie’s ignorance is probably a combination of his lack of schooling in anything but groundballs and hitting and his extreme competitive spirit.  In that vein, how can I stay mad at Ozzie?